


4 ways

by moon_hedgehog



Category: The Glass Scientists (Webcomic)
Genre: A Quiet Place AU, Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Mild Gore, Post-Apocalypse, So beware, and, because i wanted more, this is actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 13:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_hedgehog/pseuds/moon_hedgehog
Summary: to die for, to betray, to try, to stayalivealone.





	1. shut

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not prepared to explain my 4 am writings.

Virginia calls this city the Big Dump – literally because there is not much left of the city itself. The glass is rattling in the wind, crumbling underfoot, muffling the footsteps of shoes with cotton wool glued to the outsole. Surviving houses coquettishly open their creaky doors on rusting hinges, inviting to enter into their wombs. On the corner of streets 5 and 6 - carefully marked with someone's blood – lonely lies a music box with peeling colors, a tiny ballerina inside has a broken leg. Virginia doesn't know why, but she's instinctively afraid to approach the box closer than a meter. But of course it's been broken already for a very long time.

For sure Archer has a name much more poetic for this place – once he finds crayons scattered around the stationery store, picks them up, dirtying bare foots on the stained brown floor, and draws at the nearest corner something like a Greek column and a letter N. Then he proudly stretches out his hands, showing his art to Virginia, so she shakes her head and brings her palm to the face. He smiles.

Mostly, they have to sleep on the streets, wrapping in found blankets. Each night one of them remains on guard, but only somewhere in the depths of her soul, Virginia thinks that it won't help. One day a piece of the wall will collapse near their next camp, a frightened dear will rush by, Archer will find something that will make an excess noise. She stays to watch out for any wrong movements in the night more and more often, biting her nails and being afraid of frightening the motionless with a quite click-click. On those rare nights when Archer manages to send her to sleep with a frowny, uninterrupting gaze – she tosses in half-dream, tormented by the arrows of nightmares that pierce her head one after another. Sees a person who promised to protect at the cost of her life. She stands numb near the window, he's clenched in the corner, tears in his eyes, his lips tremble. Between them is space, a wide room, squeezing the lungs; a broken creature scratches the upholstery of sofa with hoarse noises, it's the center and the eye of the storm. Barely alive, she moves her lips, but Jasper has so little strength left, he's so tired to be afraid so much, all of his loved ones have long been dead. He starts to cry.

When Virginia jumps out of bed, shutting her mouth with a palm, Archer is already here. He leans over her, takes her hands in his, hugs. Their jackets rub against each other, zips kisses with clicking ominously; she digs into his shoulders, and they lie on the half-cold sheets, looking each other in the eyes.

 

Time goes too smoothly, every day Virginia stops succumbing to her silly fears more and more. They manage to settle in an apartment covered with newspapers and cotton wool – make it their own nest of laughter and talking about nothingness, still in half-whisper, with the residue of forgotten words on the tip of the tongue.

Nature takes her own, reaping the lives of crushed buildings, breaking them in half like cookies. Archer's smile becomes much brighter as he takes out these same cookies from their favorite store – and looking at him, Virginia begins to smile herself. They pass the corner of streets 5 and 6, and suddenly he breaks off with a silent gait, looking back and beckoning her to him. She rolls her eyes and takes a step, but feels something heavy underfoot, hears a crunch and frowns. It's a music box – how strange, it's still here. Something inside of her strums, from somewhere under the pink ballerina's skirt pours a melody, while she spins on her own axis.

 

Behind her back, Virginia hears a crack and puts her finger to the lips, watching filling with horror eyes opposite. These eyes are green galaxies with colliding stars.


	2. the

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this ship is no less strange than me and i like it.

The surprising thing is that at least they both know you can shout at each other only with your eyes. And gestures, but Lanyon is too dumb to use them, and Griffin remains faithful only to the middle finger. They make their way through an endless cornfield with trodden, snow-white paths. Thin stems bend and rustle with the wind, however, there is no one to take care of them, so cheerful whispering gradually becomes dead crunch. Probably somewhere in there is a farm, also probably this farm has products – traces of human habitation have been erased by rain and Griffin quite reasonably believes that at this place they can make a good profit.

When they get to the house, they find it crumpled and uglified, scratched with claws; barely soughing beams from the gusts of the wind, freely passing along the corridor. The pantry has hidden canned food and pickles, Griffin pushes most of them into Lanyon's bag, which lisps with displeasure; the same displeased glance is thrown at him by its owner. Not that Griffin doesn't do this all the time, however.

By sunset, they end up with exploring house and head to the barn. The wind gets tangled in forest's branches behind, for some reason, the rustle of the cornfield turns into anticipation in the air. Inside, in the barn, there's nothing remarkable, except for lying around unused flare gun that immediately finds itself in Griffin's hands. The hay under this thing swishes, but much louder sound comes from the back, and Griffin turns sharply, almost stumbling on bare feet. Lanyon drops pitchfork. He looks at Griffin, Griffin looks at him, and understands that basically yes – they have chock-full of time, just fire up this fucking barn with a fucking gun, with the probability of fifty percents it will save their lives. No, it will save Lanyon's life. Not his. Not his. Not his. Not his – Griffin repeats, when the ringing from a fallen object replaces by a whistle in the air, and Lanyon snorts at him:

“Asshole.”

 

After a few minutes, his numbness gives way to tingle in the limbs. Perhaps Griffin could've picked up that bag of food – did he come all this way for nothing? - but for some reason, he can't look into the eyes of a still warm corpse. He even remembers how they met. How half-angrily, half-jokingly pushed and shoved each other, long before the catastrophe. How they slept together, after all. Now all this pours out of his head with a sand. He must get out of here as quickly as possible. Rebuild his loneliness anew. Get the revolver out of the belt, finally. Why is it there, it isn't even loaded. If it can't save, could only serve as a baton. Lord.

The trembling forest is ahead, but the path ends in a heap of scrap metal in a wide ditch, and Griffin shakes, 'cause he's so tired, he wants to puke, and around only a field and a path and garbage. He clings to his hair with hands and throws revolver to the ground. It bounces off of the stone with a thumping sound, flies away to the edge of the abyss, balancing on it. Griffin winces, and, when an acute awareness pierces his mind, stretches forward. In the last second, revolver falls down, so he only touches the air with his fingers.

It hits the metal. One. Tire. Two. Iron plate. Three. Damn silver spoon. Stops. Calms.

Griffin closes his eyes, and smiles, and – that is he in whole – clears his throat, loudly drawing a line under the present day:  
  
“Fuck.”


	3. fuck

The bunker shakes from siren squealing, and this is perhaps the loudest sound that Lavender has ever had to hear. She closes her ears with hands, panically squeezing into the corner of her room, afraid to move. The door clicks open – a chopped strip of red light licks Lavender's fingertips, and she squints horrified. Nothing happens. One second. Two. She exhales, looks at the shaking fingers for a while, then gathers thoughts with willpower. Moves towards the exit, freezes, licks her lips. Presses the handle and slips into the corridor.

It's long, like a gut of an unseen monster, a devouring leviathan's throat. In the distant corner lies something twisted and broken, red stains floor and walls. Lavender hastily turns away, grabs the wall and takes a step in the other direction. Soft. Ballet flats on her legs are completely inaudible on the marble floor. The doors of the same rooms – same tiny, cozy cameras – are wide open, yet inside they have only suffocating silence. No one.

When Lavender turns the corner, the siren stops its ugly singing, and she looks around warily. Round hall, bedraggled from floor to ceiling. Oak benches. Ahead there's a fork, she vaguely remembers it's needed to move left. This corridor is much more gloomy, muffled red light floods its insides. A pipe protruding from the ceiling dangles, scratched and chopped off. There is much, much more dirt. Lavender tries to suppress the growing fear, but in the end breaks almost into a run, stops at the door with number 714 like a whirlwind, and pushes it. It succumbs easily, she's being looked out of the darkness, and after a second finds herself in strong, convulsive embraces, hearing the scratching of the fabric of her clothes with the edge of her ear.

Flowers whispers with her lips “I thought you were dead, I thought I thought”, hugs again, wipes off coming out tears and in a moment nods confidently. Lavender realizes she's been squeezing her wrists too hard and blinks.

Together they find the next hall, and Flowers shuts her mouth with a palm, fighting a fir of nausea, turning away from what once was a man and, obviously, their neighbor in an underground shelter. His stomach is gutted, intestines are wrapped around a wooden chair like worms. With glassy eyes, he looks into Lavender's soul, and she pulls Flowers to the opposite wall, pointing her finger at the red plate with big letters. “Emergency exit”. Arrow to the right. It should've been quite close, literally a couple of steps towards silence. Lavender almost hears her own tension when the next half-corridor is replaced by the next half-hall, and then they with Flowers push the red doors. Those creak so loudly. There is a tiny room with a staircase ahead, only this staircase is blocked by something huge and dark. It turns to the sound.

From behind, Lavender hears something like odd claws on the floor, and turns to Flowers, squeezing her in her arms, whispering in her ear infinitely “forgive me, forgive me, forgive me”.


	4. up

This guy follows his heels for already several weeks. Henry tries to drown out own steps with everything that falls under the arm; but the man behind obviously doesn't give a single care about the noise, because he snaps branches and kicks stones from the hills, cheerfully whistles melodies, and exasperates Henry. With all this rumbling, he almost can't hear the wind above his head, so one day even steps at the treacherously crackling branch. Hiding succeeds in the nearest ditch, but from that day Henry decides that he can't continue like that anymore. He throws a murderous glance at his companion and presses his finger to lips, but the companion only gleefully and carelessly shrugs, and the sun's rays seep through his body.

A few days later Henry reaches a boiling, foaming river and with a sigh of relief falls on his humming knees. The sloping shores here are covered with forget-me-nots and tiny dark-blue petals tickle his nose, making him sneeze and flinch. This guy only smiles, swaying nearby the water and starts muttering some song again. Henry turns to him almost nervously.

“Why are you following me?”

He halts, thoughtfully bites his finger, and a moment later spreads his arms with kind sarcasm.

“I think you need to answer this question yourself.”

Henry blinks and looks at the stranger with bewilderment, but the guy only repeats, his voice shakes the tops of the trees with echo:

“Why am I following you, Henry?”

 

A good week later, the riverbed leads him to a waterfall, behind which hides a wet, soundless cave. Henry hugs his knees with his hands, looking at the faintly crackling flame – it's too humid here, in a couple of minutes the fire should be built again. His companion sits opposite, somewhere he found red-red felt pen with which now paints the wall – and the strangest thing that, despite the drops of water, the stone shows a clear pattern. Henry wants to sleep, but still asks:

“Why don't you go?”

The guy shakes his head vaguely, not turning.

“You don't let me go.”

“I don't even know who you are,” Henry weakly denies, but relishes strange, sour taste of these words on the tongue.

In the end, he gets tired of drawing – or, perhaps, the picture has already been finished – and gets up, stretching, throwing a foggy glance at Henry. For the first time in a long, it has something conscious inside, not only empty greenery, without sparkles of life:

“I'm just in your head. I don't know who I am either.”

They look at each other for a while, then their peepers are interrupted by a sharp sound outside, and Henry involuntarily flinches. Of course here they (he?) won't face anything, but only how to explain this to painfully throbbing ears? The veil of water still hides whole world – it looks like a cage and a refuge at the same time. He forgot the last time he'd been feeling so safe. Too long ago. Beforebeforebefore… very little time after.

“I forgot you,” Henry says suddenly. Raises his eyes and repeats absently: “I forgot you.”

His friend looks at him, in this look shifts some strange pain, but after a second it's shrugged off with a smile:

“Good for you. They say human memory blocks all the most terrible details. I guess I was just horrifying!”

When Henry gets to the brazenly spinning windmill on the edge of the forest fridge, and devil-knows-how but still buzzing-working generator, he tangles into a ball, plugs his ears with hands and

_screamsscreamssreamsscreamsscreamsscreamsscreamsscreams._


End file.
